Esoteric, The.
A Magazine of Advanced and Practical Esoteric Thought.
Other titles: The Revised Esoteric
1887-1899 Monthly
Boston, MA, and from 1891, Applegate, CA. Publisher: Esoteric Pub. Co.,. Editor: Hiram Erastus Butler, founder and contributing editor; Charles H. Mackay, managing editor; Melvin L. Severy; B.B. Zerub. Succeeded by: Occult and Biological Journal->The Bible Review->The Christian Esoteric
1/1, June 1887-13/3, September 1899. 40 pp., $1.50 a year. The journal was advertised as "devoted to Advanced and Practical Esoteric Thought; Oriental and Occidental Theosophy; The New Illumination; How to Climb the Heights of Mental and Spiritual Power; the Science of Understanding, which gives the key to important ancient works. It tells how to make Attainments and ultimate the Ideal of the Ages. It teaches how to secure health and impart the same to others through the law of Mind and Soul vibrations. It expounds many long-hidden truths," etc.

Butler (1841-1916) was an American original, a Pennsylvania-born logger who chopped off a few fingers in his work and then spent 14 years as a hermit (he claimed) before emerging in Boston in the 1880s as Adhy-apaka, alias the Hellenic Ethnomedon, and Enphoron, alias the Greco-Tibetan, Ens-movens, Om mane padmi Aum. He teamed up with Eli Ohmart, or Vidya Nyaika and tried to float an Esoteric College under the initials G.N.K.R. (The Genii of Nations, Knowledges, and Religions). It failed under the attacks of the Theosophists which led to Butler's arrest. See "Blavatsky on Butler. The Great Theosoph Roasts the 'Professor,' And Says Eli Ohmart is 'an Impossible Animal in Nature,' While "G.N.K.R." Stands for "Gulls Nabbed by Knaves and Rascals," Boston Daily Globe, Friday morning edition, March 8, 1889, 4. Butler eventually ended up in California, the perennial refuge of mages and seers, where he started a utopian community and continued to publish his journal under a variety of titles. The Esoteric Fraternity (or G.N.K.R., or Order of Melchisidek as it become known) was based on astrology, radical celibacy (despite Butler's reputation for womanizing), and development of the will as the path to the New Illumination. The cult later found a place in Jacques Vallee's Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults (New York: Bantam, 1979). Extensive selections from The Esoteric were published beginning in 1895 as Revised Esoteric: A Magazine of Advanced and Practical Esoteric Thought, with a preface by Butler disclaiming a great deal of what had appeared in The Esoteric: "It was our policy in the beginning of this Magazine to accept articles without criticism that we regarded as unfit, in order that the people might to think for themselves, and thus be enabled to judge between truth and error." Parts of the original journal (the end of volume 2, all of volume 3 and most of volume 4) Butler explained were put out by Severy and Mackay while he was in California, and "for some reason there was very little material in Volume Three worthy of preservation in this revised volume." This obscure note obviously masks an internecine fight, the details of which are now impenetrable. NYPL; LOC.

Revised Esoteric.
1894-1899
Applegate, CA. Editor: Hiram Erastus Butler.
1/1, 1894-1899. Selections from the Esoteric, prefaced with a cryptic note by Butler disclaiming much of the material originally published in the journal under the editorship of Severy and Mackay, especially most of volume three. See the note under The Esoteric. These were reprinted in two volumes, published in 1904 and 1917. BL.